Li Chenchi

Centered on the artist’s signature aesthetic of “in-betweenness”, the exhibition responds to the current era of image proliferation, accelerated visual consumption and fragmented attention.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Part of Fotografiska’s Emerging Artist Program, Fotografiska Shanghai presents the opening of a brand-new solo exhibition Man With Good Taste featuring works by contemporary artist Li Chenchi this June. Centered on the artist’s signature aesthetic of “in-betweenness”, the exhibition responds to the current era of image proliferation, accelerated visual consumption and fragmented attention. Through a diverse spectrum of cross-medium visual creations, it builds a meditative field for slowed-down observation and intensified perception between the mundane and the sacred, personal memory and grand history, as well as poetic tenderness and structural fragmentation.

While taste is commonly regarded as a mere matter of personal aesthetic preference, Li Chenchi proposes that aesthetic judgment is never individual or arbitrary. It is a profound evaluation system embedded within social stratification and visual politics. The binary distinction between “good” and “bad” in aesthetics is not a simple reversal of values, but a description of an illusory, fleeting, and threshold-like moment of ambiguity.

Fascinated by such marginal and transitional states, Li regards them as a critical reflection on the rampant overproduction and rapid circulation of images in contemporary life. Against the fast-paced visual consumption of the digital age, the artist integrates repetitive daily labour and embodied practice into his creation. Through sustained physical and sensory training, he refines and strengthens his perceptual capability, continuously exploring what he defines as the divinity of seeing.

Experimenting intricately with texture, tone, imagery and material interplay, Li has developed a highly malleable creative methodology. Merging the expressive languages of painting, photography and printmaking, his works adopt layered pigmentation, superimposition and collage techniques. Moving beyond straightforward narrative representation, his visual layers traverse dual boundaries: the ordinary and the transcendental, individual recollection and historical narration. Each piece transcends flat documentation, constructing a contemplative visual field that slows down and redirects the viewer’s gaze.

The exhibition adopts an ambivalent yet meticulous artistic attitude in response to contemporary visual fatigue. In an era dominated by accelerated viewing patterns and exhausted attention spans, Li Chenchi meticulously observes the transient, intermediate essence of everyday subjects. His visual materials are extracted from the irreconcilable dual space between official historical narratives and trivial individual daily existence.

Showcasing the artist’s diverse experimental approaches to borderline aesthetics, this solo exhibition offers a profound reflection on how we see and interpret images today. Within Li’s immersive visual field, viewers are freed from the urgency of accelerated visual culture. They are invited to slow down, shift their perspective, and rediscover the profound power of images — the hidden poetry within fragmentation and the quiet divinity embedded in ordinary life.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Li Chenchi (b.1991) studied successively at the Beijing Film Academy and the Pratt Institute of the Arts in New York. His works often focus on the evolution of images between everyday life, memory, and history, transforming their perception into a ritualistic act. His practice combines painting, photography, and printmaking techniques, repeatedly processing layering, layering, and collage to elevate images beyond simple narrative expression, creating a space where viewing slows down, turns, and reconstructs.